Hi, my name is Jaymee-Lee and I am a 14-year-old girl from Australia. It all started for me when I noticed quite a few huge bruises on my arms, back and legs and I didn’t know what they were from. I also had a red dot rash on different parts of my body that we thought was a reaction from our washing powder (later we realised it was purpura). My mum decided to take me to the doctor to get a blood test as she had ITP when she was younger but we didn’t think too much of it since ITP isn’t known to be genetic.

A few days after the blood test we got a call from my GP at 2 o'clock in the morning and told us to get to the hospital ASAP. The blood test that I had at the doctor’s surgery showed that my platelets were 4,000. Then when I had a blood test at the hospital it showed that my platelets had dropped to 2,000. They released me from the hospital that day on a very high dosage of prednisolone (and Somac to prevent me from getting stomach ulcers), but it made me get really bad headaches. I normally didn’t get headaches at all so the doctors told us to decrease the dosage. The prednisolone brought my platelet count to around 30,000 but as soon as they decreased the dosage my platelets just dropped even lower.

After two months they decided to start me on IVIg once a week for five weeks. That had the same effect as the prednisolone as it would bring my platelets up a bit and then they just dropped again. I was also on tranexamic acid to make sure my periods weren't so heavy! As the IVIg wasn’t successful they decided to start me on rituximab, which has only recently been allowed to be used in Australia. I had three rituximab infusions and thankfully it cured me! I could then go back to playing basketball and doing everything I normally did! I have been in remission for around nine months now and hopefully many more!

Thank-you, Jaymee-Lee